DANCE REVIEW: Dancing with humanity

After the necessity of food and shelter, dance — or whatever you choose to call the urge to move expressively — is one of mankind's most basic urges. As a wordless means of communication, it has been an important part of ceremonies, rituals, celebrations and story telling since the earliest human civilizations.

But what it means to many today is "concert dance" — performances on a proscenium stage that appeal to a limited audience of sophisticated aficionados and can be bewildering or alienating to anyone else.

Which is why Alex Ketley's "No Hero" is such an important work, one that brings us back to the ancient concept of movement as both a salve for the soul and a mortal bond.

Ketley — who founded The Foundry, a contemporary troupe, after performing with the San Francisco Ballet — and his partner, Aline Wachsmuth, spent five weeks traveling the rural West, talking to locals about what dance means to them. Along the way, he filmed and she performed, often sharing meals and stories with their new acquaintances as well. When they returned home, the videos, photos and conversations informed Ketley's choreography and choice of music in creating this spirited but sweet work.

Projections of characters and chapters from the trip serve as backdrop to live dance on a bare stage performed by Wachsmuth and Foundry dancer Marlie Cuoto. Infrequently, their movements mirror what is on the screen, but more often, the videos serve as catalyst, sparking fluid and sometimes funny extrapolations. Ketley's style is all organic — body ripples, arm swoops, and arcing circles, accented by pedestrian gestures, such as hands covering the mouth and explosively released like someone bursting a dandelion head with a forceful breath.

As engaging as the movements are, the stories we hear in interspersed film segments are moreso: a couple who share the family tradition of a "happy dance" with their grandchildren; the remarkable tale of 88-year-old Marta Becket, who created her own opera house in a ghost town, where she performed six days a week for 40 years, often to empty seats; or the poignant reminiscences of Shirley, who recalls her one turn on the floor with an instructor from Arthur Murray as "the funnest thing in my life."

Even those who initially regarded Wachsmuth and Ketley as alien creatures eventually succumbed to their lure; when Wachsmuth dances in a dusty RV park for a retired scientist whose closest experience of the art form is "dancing out of debt," he finds geological references in her movements.

With Ketley's eye for pictures as well as choreography, the hour-long work is visually stimulating throughout. But "No Hero" — so named because he wanted to strip dance of its characteristic heroic ideals and find out "what part of dance is in all of us" — isn't so much about aesthetics as it is about humanity.

Aline Wachsmuth dancing in the living room of 88-year-old Marta Becket, who performed in a near-empty ghost town opera house six days a week for 40 years. / Photo courtesy Alex Ketley

Ketley's genuine interest in and reverence for his subjects and his generosity of spirit — qualities that are reflected back by his subjects — are the compassionate glue that make this more a towering achievement than a mere research experiment. In the end, "No Hero" stands as an engaging and enduring testament to the power of dance to connect even the most disparate among us.

Carrie Seidman

Carrie Seidman has been a newspaper features writer, columnist and reviewer for 30 years...and a dancer for longer than that. She has a master's degree from Columbia University Journalism School and is a former competitive ballroom dancer. Contact her via email, or at (941) 361-4834.
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Last modified: March 7, 2014
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